Wilbert Rodeheaver

Wilbert Rodeheaver was the chair of psychology at Mississippi State University during the 1980s and clinical director of the Whitfield Facility for the Criminally Insane.

Biography
Wilbert Rodeheaver was born in Mississippi, and he became a psychologist and an author of psychology books (including on the M'Naughten rule about knowing right from wrong) before serving as clinical director of the Whitfield Facility for the Criminally Insane. In 1973, he began working for the state and became the chair of psychology at Mississippi State University; his knowledge of psychology led to him being called to testify at 46 trials regarding criminal insanity. In 1984, he was called in as the state's psychologist for the interviewing of Carl Lee Hailey, who was being tried for the murders of Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard. Rodeheaver claimed that Hailey was perfectly sane when he killed the two men, but he was discredited when Hailey's attorney Jake Brigance brought up the fact that Rodeheaver never found a man insane, and that, at the trial of Dan Baker, where he pled that he was sane, although he was later found insane and institutionalized. Baker was sent to Whitfield, where Rodeheaver was clinical director, and Brigance asked Rodeheaver if he would keep patients of sound mind and body at his clinic for ten years; the jury discovered that Rodeheaver declared people sane for the sake of the trial, discrediting him.